Chapter 6: Three Moments of an Explosion
1.
Ashley and Kaidan had good armour with working kinetic shields, two M-5 Phalanx pistols, and a set of crates only a hop-step to their side. Combine that with Kaidan's biotic implant and omni-tool set to "SENTINEL" configuration, and the two Alliance officers weren't all that worried about surviving the firefight. T'aresh's batarians could be a challenge no doubt, but so long as the crate's held, they could wait it out and pick off whoever came close.
The problem would be if the batarians—who apparently were just as happy blasting whoever T'aresh said to blast whether he was alive or not—decided to do the cliched-yet-effective thing in these situations and go for a hostage. A few civilians were still around—still in grabbing range—so it wouldn't take much for one half to focus on covering fire while the others looked for unsupervised limbs to snag. If it got to that point, then who the hell knew what would happen, because one of the other people sliding into cover not that far from them was a blue-and-black armoured turian that apparently knew them and had aim that put Shepard to shame while, on the other side of the concourse area, two uniformed humans were glowing purple and getting ready to start flinging biotics at people. If the batarians went for a hostage, then it was anyone's guess whether the other parties would stand down or if Ashley and Kaidan would have to make them stand down.
"Do we try teaming up with the others?" Ashley yelled as bullets kicked at the crate she'd dove behind.
"Uhhh sure," Kaidan said, feeling his own crate buck against the back of his head. "Find the most reasonable looking one and start there!"
Ashley glanced towards the turian. "He said our names."
"Yeah I'm curious about that too!"
Ashley leaned out of cover as far as she figured she could get away with and waved at the turian like he was a passing shuttle. "Hey—Man of Mystery!"
The turian ducked out of cover and shuffled on his knees, getting as close to Ashley as he could before bullets started spiting up bits of concrete around his head. He rolled (Ashley didn't know turians could roll like that, what with their head fringes and everything) and collided with the crate that the Ashley and Kaidan were hiding behind.
"All right, yeah—c'mon over," Ashley said, trying to get her voice to rise over the sound of guns.
"What's the plan you two?" the turian said.
"Keep 'em away from any civilians," Ashley said. "We'll let whoever the hell those other people are take the offensive, if they really want to."
"They're returning fire," Kaidan said. "One of them's going after the woman who said she's a Spectre."
"Good," the turian said. He swapped his Viper for an M-15 Vindicator battle rifle. "That'll draw some of them out—we can get a clean shot."
As if on-cue, a batarian ducked over cover and started spraying at the downed woman who called herself "St. Pierre," only to have his head replaced by a dissipating red mist thanks to a burst from the turian's rifle.
"Scratch one!" he said.
"Heh, nice shootin' Tex," Kaidan said.
Across the concourse, Jacob saw the headless batarian go down and resumed his awkward-as-hell-looking sprint towards this Agent St. Pierre, who was still moving and groaning (and bleeding). He hurled some biotics at a crate and yanked it into the line-of-fire, giving him and Agent St. Pierre some cover for however long the material wanted to stay solid. Carefully, slowly, he rolled St. Pierre over to get a better look at her wound; it looked like she'd gotten the bullet in her bicep, which wasn't great but at least there was a chance she didn't have any bone fragments moving around to tear at things.
"Need medi-gel Miranda!" he said, looking back over his shoulder. Miranda was behind a column—or what was left of a column—that held a large tin roof up over some spare-parts stall. It looked like she was scanning around for some bits of cover to help her move forward. "Miranda c'mon—she's still bleeding!"
Miranda finished off her thermal clip, looked at Jacob, and then after a seconds-long pause pressed some keys in her omni-tool. Jacob could hear it beep at her in every soldier's least favorite tone ("I am sorry but that operation cannot be completed") and, one frustrated head-shake later, Miranda forcefully closed the holographic projector.
"She's not wearing a medi-gel distributor," Miranda said. She fished into a medium-sized package on her waist and yanked out a red bag, then tossed it at Jacob. "You'll have to do it manually."
Jacob tore open the bag and half a second later, St. Pierre's wound was closed and she stopped trying to bite clean through her upper jaw. She was stable, more or less—physically, at least. Whatever the hell she'd been planning right before she got shot, it obviously didn't work.
Miranda finished off another thermal clip, then signaled for Jacob's attention. When she got it, she pointed in the direction of this Archangel and the two Alliance officers that had just been confirmed to be Lieutenant Ashley Williams and Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko.
"They're pinning the batarians down," Miranda said. "Cover me."
Jacob didn't have time to question the game-plan as Miranda dove out of cover, summersaulted out into the open, and then unleashed a biotic shockwave that knocked a good half of the scattered batarians onto their asses. The other half rocketed their heads out of cover and had their heads turned into practice targets for Archangel and the Alliance officers; Jacob yanked out his shotgun and put two shredder rounds into the chest of the nearest batarian stupid enough to stand up from his cover. Jacob had to duck back under as return-fire clanged off the crate, but tinnitus was about all those rounds could do. Whoever was involved with goods-transportation on this station sure loved their reinforc—wait no it was Aria, that made sense.
By the time Jacob had returned to the safety of cover, Miranda was finished sliding behind the last two groups of batarians. One shield-overload and a warp-blast later and one of the groups was rendered completely helpless; small arms fire and Jacob's shotgun finished them off. Miranda had to roll a good six or seven times to stay out of the fire of the last few batarians (and still had her shields clipped in the process—dammit, sloppy work, they shouldn't've managed to even see her let alone hit her) but the surround-sound gunfire from Jacob, Archangel, and Alenko and Williams forced them to the ground one colleague short.
Now behind another column, Miranda saw one of the batarians go for merchant (a batarian one at that—no love lost on this station, apparently…) who'd been hiding in his stall. A shot from Archangel—quick, precise, totally confident; Archangel very clearly lived up to the lofty descriptions of his dossier—reduced his head to a putrid chowder. The herd now having been thinned, all Miranda would need to do is get Jacob to move to her old position and switch to his pistol, then she'd move in to—
A krogan started charging from somewhere and as the Second Rule of Keeping Your Ass Alive clearly stated (rule number one: "Always make sure your mass effect drive is off before you exit your ship"), any time you heard a krogan but didn't know where they were, you hit the deck and covered your heads. Everyone did that—Miranda, Jacob, Archangel, Alenko, Williams—everyone except the four remaining batarians.
Three of them did eventually hit the deck when the fourth member of their party had his spine replaced with a fine-powder substitute. Just for good measure, as the krogan was busy laughing and threatening to start stomping on knee-caps, a high-powered rifle fired off from somewhere near the entrance to the lower-level markets. Everyone's head turned and saw, who else, but the batarian guard that'd been standing outside Afterlife club.
His four eyes surveyed the market like a teacher who'd just come back to their classroom and saw it'd been turned into a brothel.
"I knew it'd be you," he said. "All right, everyone not on T'aresh's payroll, back to Afterlife. Aria wants to negotiate the terms of your apology." He looked at Garrus. "'Cept for you, Archangel. Aria's got nothing to say that you've gotta hear."
Garrus's posture turned even more rigid than it already was. "That's too bad. I've got a lot to say to her."
"We already know you're a tough guy," the guard said. "Don't waste your time playing it up."
"He's with us," Ashley said. "Pretty sure, anyways," she added under her breath.
"Local consultant," Kaidan said. "We've got the paperwork to prove it, if you wanna see it."
"Don't threaten me like that, Alliance," the guard said. After some hesitation, he signaled for them to get walking. His attention migrated to Miranda, Jacob, and Cleo. "You three get going too. We'll clean up whatever the hell T'aresh decided was gonna be the last stupid thing he ever did."
Next to Jacob, the krogan chuckled.
"We don't have the time," Miranda said.
"We need a medic," Jacob said.
"We've got a bartender," the guard said. "And as for whatever schedule you're on, Aria's overwritten it. So get going before she decides you're not welcome on the station anymore."
Miranda hesitated and, for a second, Jacob thought she was just gonna walk straight on to the quarantine zone and dare Aria's forces to stop her. But she looked back at Agent St. Pierre—who was suffering from the effects of medi-gel's shortened life as an anesthetic when you didn't have a suit-based dispersion system—and, while the hardened glare never went away, she started back towards Afterlife all the same.
"Absolute idiocy," she said as she passed the guard.
"Funny—Aria said the same thing." The guard walked down the steps to the market as Jacob joined Miranda, and before the doors leading to Afterlife could close he heard the guard say: "All right, three ammo types, three punks—let's see who gets what."
"Omega," Miranda said, "what a piss-hole."
Jacob bit back his question about whether it was the executions she was objecting to, or the fact that the guard was being so showy about it.
And up ahead, Ashley turned to Archangel and said, "Now that you're our consultant—thanks, Alenko—mind telling us how you know who we are?"
"In public? I mind a lot," Archangel said. "But go ahead and ask yourself, how could a turian sharpshooter end up knowing two Alliance Marines on a first-name basis like that?"
A small smile crept onto Ashley's face. "All right, I think I can do that…copper."
Archangel, underneath his helmet, allowed himself to chuckle.
"You catch that, Alenko?" Ashley said over her shoulder. She saw that Kaidan was smiling too.
"I got it," he said. "And now I'm pissed. I was gonna make a bet, and I'd've just won twenty credits. Thanks for rushing out ahead."
"Time waits for no man," Ashley said.
Kaidan looked off into the distance. "Yeah but it could at least obey the speed-limit."
2.
As much as Kaidan and Ashley were in a newly found (or maybe newly re-found) joking mood, Aria sucked that energy out of the room the moment she turned around with a massive snarl on her face. You couldn't tell with Archangel—sorry, Garrus Freakin' Vakarian (how the hell did he end up on Omega?)—'cause of the helmet, but the other group of humans looked like they executed humour for insubordination before they'd landed, so they probably didn't care much at all. The one that'd called herself a Spectre and had very clearly been lying about it was drinking some blue liquid and had her upper arm wrapped in about nine layers of bandages. Ashely could understand her not finding much humour in the situation, but everyone else gave off…she didn't know, something like "secret police" vibes.
The logo wasn't like anything Ashely had seen before either.
Garrus, meanwhile, was trying his absolute best to not start insulting Aria—to not start blaming her for every rotten thing that existed on Omega—and he hoped that Kaidan and Ashley would tell him if his mandibles were clicking against the inside of his helmet.
Miranda wanted to skip the insult phase of things and go straight to shooting anyone that didn't let her leave.
Aria cleared her throat, drew everyone's attention her way. "I am getting…extremely tired of seeing humans in my office," she said.
"You're the one that forced us here," Ashley said.
"She's right," Miranda said. "Whatever you have to say to us, just get it over with."
"And if I decide to space everyone?" Aria said. "Get you off my station?"
"We'd find a way back on," Miranda said.
"Look," Jacob said, "we just want Dr. Solus. That's it. Let us get him and we're gone—you'll never see us again." He turned to Kaidan and Ashley. "Can't speak for them, obviously."
"We've got our own reasons for not wanting to leave," Kaidan said.
"And for the record," Ashley said. "That puke T'aresh or whatever his name was? He started it."
Aria's face hadn't looked anything other than existentially pissed off in nearly two hours—since the first batch of these humans had landed on Omega—and she wasn't about to stop showing how angry these idiots had made her. That being said…
"T'aresh tends—tended, to do that, I'll admit. Though anyone with any experience with batarians has to know that poking an eye out is a great way to make enemies."
"I'm a human," Ashley said. "They hate me anyways."
"Yes," Aria said, "and such a very human response, too." She ignored whatever Ashley was going to say next and turned to Archangel. "And you? You're the one person in that market I didn't need to see, and yet, here you are."
"I'm with them," Garrus said, motioning towards Ashley and Kaidan with his elbow. "And I wasn't going to pass up the chance to remind you that I still exist, and that I'm still watching."
"How very excellent for you," Aria said. She regarded the group as a whole. "The only untouchable people here are the two with Alliance uniforms. Everyone else, I could kill you and dump your bodies off the station—and I'm unbelievably tempted, right now."
"Kill anyone here and you'll have to reconsider us being 'untouchable,'" Ashley said.
"In no possible universe, in no possible context, do you scare me," Aria said. "None of you do." She paused, stared everyone down, dared them to make her push her point. "You're all useful to me, in one way or another, and that's as far as my forgiveness will stretch." She turned to Archangel, who she noticed had stiffed the moment she mentioned usefulness. "Yes, Archangel—that includes you."
Behind his visor, Garrus's mandibles clicked and vibrated and threatened to come completely untethered from the rest of his face.
"Everything that I'm about to say," Aria said, "I'm only going to say once. If you forget it, ask your partner, because none of you will be receiving any more help from me. The two of you going after the salarian doctor—"
"Mmph—three," Cleo said, jaw locked as she waited for more drugs to kick in.
"Whatever the number is, you'll go straight to the quarantine zone. Fifteen minutes from when you leave this office, my people will start considering that an act of aggression—so don't dally." Aria then turned to Ashley and Kaidan. "You two, I've already told you what you need to know. Get to it or get out, am I clear?" And before either Alliance officer could say anything, Aria crossed her arms and stared down Garrus. "As for Archangel, you can just leave. I don't want to keep you from making mercenaries scared of the dark."
Objections were raised of the whole half a second it took for Aria to turn around and motion to her guards to clear out her space. The group found themselves out on the streets of Omega soon after, everyone consciously aware that they were no longer being ignored by the population.
Everyone except Garrus, who was staring at Afterlife, clenching and unclenching his talons. Both Kaidan and Ashley noticed, looked at each other, nodded, then tapped him on the arm.
"Still with us?" Ashley said.
"Negative," Miranda said. She pulled up her omni-tool and out popped one of her dossier's. "Archangel is needed for an urgent mission. After we're done collecting Dr. Solus, our instructions are to recruit you." Away went the omni-tool. "Perhaps Aria managed to do us a favour after all."
"Listen lady," Ashley said. "I don't think you've got a full grasp of the situation."
"Don't I?" Miranda said. She turned to Garrus. "You're Archangel, are you not? You're needed for an important mission—a mission of great importance for the human race." Miranda let herself glance at Ashley to see if her comment had any effect. Seemed like it did, from just a glance. "If you want to do good for people who will appreciate it, you'll come with us."
"Don't you have to say 'please,' first?" Kaidan said.
"Look," Jacob said. "We can't share much, but you two are Alliance, right? So trust us when we say that we're on the same side. We've just got a different mission than you do."
"Funny," Ashley said. "Can't imagine how you'd know what our mission is."
Miranda shot Jacob a glare and he did his best to show her it didn't phase him. "Archangel can do the most good with us." Miranda said. "It's in everyone's best interest if he follows us to the clinic."
"Does this mean I get to leave?" Cleo said. Judging by the response, nobody seemed to be listening.
"What's your mission then?" Ashley said. "And better say it quick—you've got ten minutes left, remember?"
"We're investigating the disappearing human colonies." Jacob said. When Miranda gave him yet another glare he decided to tell her where to stick it. "What? You want me to keep dancing around the point? We give them some answers, maybe we can work together."
"Answers?" Kaidan said. "Buddy, that just raises question after question."
Garrus had been quiet, and he could tell that the others were noticing. But of course he'd been quiet. Human colonies were disappearing and not a word of that had made it to Omega's streets, even though there had to be hundreds of thousands of humans on the station. The one of them—Jacob seemed to be his name—had all but admitted that he and the other two humans weren't Alliance…so did that mean the Alliance didn't even care? More like they'd been bogged down with the same bureaucratic crap that'd grounded Shepard and kept them three steps behind Saren until the very end. No doubt it was the same problem plaguing everything that pretended to be civilized in this damn galaxy…
Doing some good would be nice, whether people were there to appreciate him or not. But…he trusted Ashley and Kaidan, too—had seen them rail against the same things that Shepard had back in the day—so…so they'd be looking to do some good too, just like old times.
"What are you two doing?" Garrus said, turning to Ashley and Kaidan. The two Alliance officers exchanged looks.
"We'd be happy to tell you," Kaidan said. "But…well, same problem you've got, if you know what I mean."
Yeah, ears and eyes everywhere. Well, Garrus did trust them. Trust…when was the last time he'd felt that?
"Tell whoever's so damn interested in me that I'm declining," Garrus said to Miranda. Her face was unreadable but the temperature of the air had changed around them. "If you're really trying to save the galaxy, then maybe we'll cross paths somewhere down the line."
"And until then," Ashley said. "I'm sure the Alliance'll be interested to hear someone's investigating our colonies."
"Heh, right," Cleo said. "In like 8-to-12 months."
Miranda shot Cleo a look that Jacob was used to, but Cleo evidently wasn't. She turned back to Garrus. "Understood…Archangel." And then the sound of her heels clacking on the ground, followed by the hurried footsteps of Jacob and Cleo, signaled the end of that conversation.
Ashley told Garrus that they'd fill him in on the skycar ride over while Kaidan sent an update to Anderson—GARRUS FOUND; DISCUSS ADDING HIM TO UNIT AFTER?—and, for once in a painful eternity, Garrus felt like he was among friends again. The feeling was strong enough to push away the guilt that'd caked itself into his carapace since Sidonis; hell, it was strong enough that it took Garrus half the trip to realize it was still there.
Jacob, meanwhile, had looked behind to see Garrus, Ashley, and Kaidan leave, and was busy shaking his head. "What the hell? Do we need to work on our sales pitch?"
"Hardly," Miranda said. "There wasn't any chance he'd come with us."
"Loving the optimism here," Cleo said.
Jacob pushed ahead, pulling up to Miranda's side. "What's that mean?"
"I should've guessed when I first read his dossier," Miranda said. "It all makes sense now."
"What does?" Jacob said.
"That's Garrus Vakarian," Miranda said, taking the steps back down to the market—and eventually to the quarantine zone—two at a time. "Recruiting him, while Alenko and Williams are here? I didn't have a chance."
3.
The Widowmaker was quiet. Apparently even the parts of Cerberus that didn't deal with assassinations and leaving racist comments on Extranet videos liked to keep their noise to a minimum, and Joker hated all of them for it. The most boring part of a mission as always waiting in the docks for the ground team to finish whatever the hell they were doing, but doing so on the Widowmaker was infinitely worse, for obvious reasons. The "feeling like you're looking at someone wearing the skin of your dead friend" kind of obvious reasons.
The seat was comfy though—had to give Cerberus at least that much.
That very comfy seat spun around on its axis, and Joker ended up staring at the area of the ship that, once upon a time, had the bridge crew's escape pod. And naturally enough, his mind travelled back in time to when that mystery ship—which was looking more and more like something from the Collectors, given how quickly it got to work—annihilated the Normandy and killed a third of its crew. Commander Shepard included.
She'd had to come back for him because his stupid, stubborn ass decided it couldn't abandon the ship; she had to come back and shove him into that escape pod and, just before she could climb in herself, the cabin exploded and she was pulled out into space, pulled towards Alchera's atmosphere, pulled to her death…
He'd said "yes" to the call from a "concerned organization" after they'd finally told him everything he needed to know—about Project Lazarus and the Normandy reconstruction and how Shepard, she'd died yes but modern medicine could take care of even that when the people in charge had the willpower—and he'd gotten to Minuteman Station just in time to find out that his chance to say sorry, to make things right, had been utterly and completely destroyed. Worse than the old Normandy (no, the Normandy, there's only one Normandy); this was worse, because he'd finally started to forgive himself thanks to the promise of doing whatever Shepard needed to make things right.
Joker thought about what he'd almost done with his thumb on Minuteman Station and cursed himself for being in a public place.
"Mr. Moreau."
"Ah Jesus fuck!"
EDI's glowing mushroom form was poking out of the panel just to the left of Joker's station. It was blinking blue and acting like sh—sorry it hadn't scared the absolute crap out of Joker's entire bloodline.
"Apologies, Mr. Moreau," EDI said. "I did not mean to startle you."
"Yeah friggin right," Joker said, turning his chair back around. "Learn to knock would ya?"
"This area does not have a door."
"It's just a goddamn figure of…never mind, it doesn't matter."
EDI paused, let Joker calm down a bit, then said, "I have been monitoring Operative Lawson's omni-tool. They have just entered the quarantine zone."
"Thanks for that," Joker said. "Wanna give me the forecast now?"
"There is more."
"Wow no way."
"Operative Lawson and Operative Taylor have encountered two Alliance officers on the station. They are former crewmembers of yours: Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko and Lieutenant Ashley Williams."
Joker froze. Kaidan and Ashley? They were here? "What the hell…you're…they're on Omega?"
"That is correct, Mr. Moreau."
"Jesus…no way they get sent here—together—for just any reason. What the hell's the Alliance up to?"
"They have also encountered another slated member of the team," EDI said. "Archangel, the vigilante on the station. It appears that Operative Lawson has ascertained his identity."
Joker turned, finally looked at EDI's holographic image. "What're you about to tell me, EDI?"
"Archangel is Garrus Vakarian."
"We're recruiting—" Joker bit down on his lip and quickly surveyed around the cabin. Nobody else on the crew appeared to be listening, but still, inside voice—now. "We're recruiting Garrus?" Joker said.
"It appears that Garrus has elected to join with Staff Commander Alenko and Lieutenant Williams," EDI said. "I do not yet know why."
"No, 'course not. Bet you neither does Miranda." Joker felt blood rushing through every part of his body—felt pins and needles everywhere—and rubbing his face to get the tingling out of his cheeks didn't do a damn thing. He leaned back in his chair and nearly closed his eyes until a thought crashed through his mind. "You're…monitoring Miranda's omni-tool? As in, she didn't tell you this?"
"Operative Lawson has not reported back to the…Widowmaker," EDI said. "I have been monitoring her since Agent St. Pierre requested an emergency connection with Lazarus Cell comms channels."
"What the hell…" Joker looked out the viewing windows, at the Omega port and its immediate surroundings. Nothing happening out there—no emergency to be seen. "Why're you telling me this? Do we need to pull out?"
"That is not the case, Mr. Moreau," EDI said. "I am telling you this because I believed you had a right to know."
Joker paused. Half a million thoughts were in his skull now, and like a blind ape groping for the biggest fruit in the tree, he snagged the one that was making the most noise and pulled it to the forefront of his mind. "Why?" he said. "Just to make me squirm?"
"No, Mr. Moreau…" EDI's turn to pause. "I simply thought you deserved to know. I do not believe Operative Lawson intends to tell you."
"Can't believe I'm saying this, EDI, but score one for Miranda." Joker pointed at his legs and without even realizing it, his voice got harsher and his face turned angrier. "Because what the fuck am I gonna do about any of that?"
EDI was silent for a while.
"I am…not sure, Mr. Moreau," she said eventually.
"Then so much for being a 'smart AI' I guess," Joker said. He turned his chair so it faced forward again and scowled, trying his best to ignore the flickering holographic image to his left.
EDI's hologram remained active for a little while longer. After she considered all the possible reasons why Joker would react that way to the news she'd just told him, her hologram faded away, and she returned to monitoring the ship in the event that something happened.
EDI thought that, were it one of her own colleagues, she would want to know. She had, evidently, misjudged.
4.
It was an office building. The Blue Suns headquarters—the thing that Garrus had been searching for, night in and night out, endlessly searching searching searching for—was a respectable-looking office building in one of the more respectable-looking neighborhoods in the station. Few streets, since everything was upside down; few crime, too, or at least the kind that a vigilante with a gun could deal with. It was basically the Citadel all over again: here, Tarak was just another white-collar criminal who got rich through bogus contracts and illicit transactions…or immoral transactions, anyways.
And just like on the Citadel, Garrus couldn't touch him.
"I can't believe it's you!" Ashley had said as the skycar was ducking in and out of Omega's skyscrapers. She lightly punched Garrus in the shoulder. "When you went back to C-SEC we thought that was it—next time we see him, it's gonna be at whatever the turian equivalent of court martial hearing is."
"Hate to say it, big guy," Kaidan said. "But she's not lying. We had a pool going and everything."
"And I'm sure you two, being my dear friends who've gotten through more near-death experiences thanks to my aim and quick thinking than anyone else in the Alliance, bet appropriately."
"Fifty credits on 'within a year'," Ashley said.
"Even hundred for me," Kaidan said. "But I promised to come visit ya."
"Good to see you two were paying attention," Garrus said. "Being behind cover so much, screaming out 'Garrus Garrus—come help me!' I wasn't sure you'd learned anything about me at all." Garrus chuckled. "And it's good to know you don't think C-SEC executes insubordinate officers just because it's run by turians."
"That was Wrex's bet," Ashley said.
"Nothing but wish-fulfillment on his part," Garrus said. "Which reminds me, you'll have to tell me how everyone else is doing once we're done here, with…whatever it is the two of you are up to." Garrus took off his helmet, letting air hit his face outside of his hideaway for the first time in nearly two weeks. "Which—not to nag or anything—but so far, I'm still in the dark."
He saw Ashley and Kaidan exchange glances and then they told him. They told him everything. Shepard was back—or at least someone was pretending to be Shepard; Ashley kept insisting that hadn't been ruled out yet—and the Alliance had sent them to investigate…and that led them to Tarak.
And after he'd reduced the stammering he'd been doing in his head over hearing that Shepard was alive, making sure that what he said out loud was coherent and calm, his self-control faltered and, dammit, he'd taken his helmet off so everyone in the skycar could see his face darken.
"Guessing you know this guy," Ashley said.
Garrus's mandibles clicked.
"Garrus? You okay?"
"I know him," Garrus said. "I've been tracking him down—trying to get a bead on his movements—for longer than I want to remember. And the last couple of weeks? Rumour has it that he's planning something big, and I've been trying to get my hands on someone who'll tell me what it is."
"Does this have something to do with being called 'Archangel'?" Kaidan said.
Garrus's mandibles clicked even harder. "And then some."
Garrus put his helmet back on. No use letting everyone know what he was thinking; that black visor had been a better friend to him than his rifle the last little bit. No use spurning it, even around people he could trust.
"So we've all got something to beat out of this Tarak person then," Ashley said.
"You two'll have to go without me," Garrus said. "Wherever Tarak is, his people, they'll know who I am the moment I set foot near them. Then it's game-over for everyone and Aria's not going to give you a second crack at this." Garrus shook his head, gripped his knees. "I'm not jeopardizing your mission just because I couldn't find Tarak on my own."
"Hey easy there big guy," Kaidan said. "Don't need to beat yourself up like that."
"Yeah—we couldn't find Tarak on our own either, and Anderson set us up pretty good as far as support goes," Ashley said.
"Until today, you two weren't looking for him," Garrus said. "It's fine. I'll make do."
And so now Garrus was sitting in the back of the skycar, hidden from sight, looking up at the tower and waiting for Ashley and Kaidan to come back down and thinking to himself, Aria could've told him Tarak was here at any time. She could've sent one of her people out and told Archangel, this is where he is, we know—we certainly know—that you've got business to attend to with him, so here he is. One gesture like that and the last however long that Garrus'd been living in a hell of his own making, all of that, it would've disappeared.
Aria played him like a puppet and he'd been too stupid to notice until just now, when it was all but spelt out for him in neon letters.
He hadn't thought about Shepard a lot since the news had broken. He tried to but…his thoughts were finding purchase on other things. On Omega, on his team…on Sidonis…then right back to Tarak.
Tarak hadn't pulled the trigger, but he'd given Sidonis the gun.
5.
"Gotta say, I'm worried about Garrus," Ashley said.
"Yeah," Kaidan said. "Something's eating him."
"You think he's mission fit?"
"I think he'll make it work. It's what happens when we're back on the shuttle that's got me worried."
"Mmm."
Kaidan shot Ashley a look and her hope was, despite Alenko's past attempts to get into her head and catalogue things, that he didn't notice how her eyes went ramrod straight as they entered the building. She didn't used to feel this way, back when she was stuck down as an NCO and had someone like Shepard around. She felt green and out of the loop and like everyone around her had gotten a systems-upgrade, and she was stuck on her previous OS.
They'd gotten out of Afterlife just fine and everything before that, with T'aresh and his…whatever, gang, if that's what it was? She'd been right to say he started it and after all was said and done, it'd worked out fine—great even since that'd led them to Garrus…but that was still dumb luck, not rigorous planning or forwarding thinking or a command of the situation that made sure all the pieces fit together the way they needed to. It's the kind of thing Shepard could've pulled off without so much as raising her voice; guess for Lieutenant Ashley Williams, though, the universe had just enough sense of humour to mock her, make her think maybe she had a handle on things, and then really pull the rug out from under her.
"Hey, Ash, we're doing fine," Kaidan said.
Ashley kept her eyes forward. "Not now, Alenko."
And so Kaidan backed off.
Ashley and Kaidan treated this building like it was full of legitimate business because, by all accounts, Tarak wanted people to treat it like it was full of legitimate businesses. Seemed as though it was known that Aria knew the location of Tarak's headquarters and had gone ahead and informed the Suns that a business partnership was heading their way. It'd been a bit of a gamble to simply walk in and say that they'd like a meeting with Tarak, courtesy of a Supply Logistics Contractor that'd done work for the Alliance but wanted a more profitable future than government work, since neither Ashley or Kaidan could tell if they could trust Aria on something like this. Lying was probably first and second nature to her. It was a doubly risky move considering how they had to leave their armour with Garrus. But after some further cajoling from the asari secretary at the front doors, Tarak agreed to meet them.
Things made a bit more sense when the secretary told them to behave themselves and not-so-subtly gave them a very Aria-esq grin.
"God she's got people everywhere," Ashley said.
"I bet you some folks find that comforting," Kaidan said.
"I bet you some folks are too dumb to live."
"Devil you know versus the devil you don't," Kaidan said. "And say what you want about Aria: people sure know her."
Ashley wasn't going to argue that point.
When they got to Tarak's office, he apparently was more than happy to slot them in. Something about always looking for new clients, especially ones that were happy to bolster the Suns very important mission of bolstering property-defense on stations like Omega with increased business and planning (and if Aria promised him good money if he heard them out).
"As you can probably guess," Tarak said. "Things go missing a lot around here. In fact, I should check: are you two missing anything since you've landed?"
"Just my sense of smell," Kaidan said. "Which, hey, happy to count that as a blessing. Just hoping it comes back at some point."
"I know the feeling," Tarak said. He closed something on his monitor and Ashley tried her best to get a look at it without seeming suspicious, but eventually gave up. Tarak's office was spare and definitely looked like something you could abandon at a moment's notice if someone came around to cause trouble—something that, if it ended up getting hit by a rocket or a commando team, you wouldn't lose too many important things in the process. So Tarak was smart and obviously tried to plan ahead…Ashley wasn't entirely sure how to lean on that angle but, hopefully, something would come up as she kept working through the conversation. Couldn't be harder than surviving a geth attack, anyways.
"Now," Tarak said, "you say this is just a preliminary inquiry? Nothing's set in stone yet?"
"Right now, you're close to the top of a very, very long list," Ashley said. "But the Board's looking to get the best value-for-money in a partnership, so that's what we're here to discover."
"It's hard to beat Blue Suns experience," Tarak said. "We've been around just in general for a very long time; we've certainly been on Omega longer than any other established organization."
"Yeah what attracted us in the first place is that you handle most of the major shipping around here," Kaidan said. "That's close to what we did for the Alliance—deep outpost stuff, not super glamorous. We figure the biggest hurdle to making any partnerships last long-term was unfamiliarity. We know shipping, you guys do a lot of that, so as far as unknown-unknowns, we've probably got it covered."
"But you want the best value-for-money, you say," Tarak said.
"Just making the shareholders happy," Ashley said. She avoided giving Alenko a sly smirk but couldn't help but feel her adrenaline kick in. "My partner here pretty much nailed our line of thinking, though."
"Sounds perfectly reasonable to me," Tarak said. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. His two sets of eyes each locked onto Ashley and Kaidan separately, but since all they had to do was focus on the ones that seemed to be looking at them, the batarian's noted advantage in negotiations didn't seem like that much of a challenge. "All right then—what would I have to do to bump the Blue Suns even higher up on your list?"
"Good question," Kaidan said. He turned to Ashley. "Any thoughts?"
"Well…quickest way to prove you've got the docks locked down and secure is to show us your logs, if that makes sense. Just the last couple weeks should do, but if you can prove there haven't been any major breaches or irregularities, and on a place like Omega no less, then it'll be hard to argue results if we go forward with negotiations."
Was this going to work? So much for the geth comparison: her heart couldn't tell the damn difference.
"That's…potentially doable," Tarak said. "There's the issue of a security breach, however. A lot of clients pay good money to keep their records…blacked out, shall we say."
"Perfectly understood," Kaidan said, "and we're not looking to step on toes. Tell you what: how about we put down some collateral just so you know we're serious about a partnership and the privacy of your clientele?"
"Collateral?" Tarak said.
"We've got funds," Ashley said, "and we're authorized to use them if it helps paint a clearer picture. Hundred thousand credits? That about cover it?"
Tarak folded his hands back onto his lap and turned around in his chair, so he was looking out at the orange light generated by the millions of bulbs and open windows and blinking probes that weaved their way through Omega's buildings. That seemed like a good sign, so far as either Ashley or Kaidan could tell. Tarak could've just laughed at them and thrown them out through the front door—nothing in the Legitimate Business guidebook said you couldn't do that.
"You say you only want the last two weeks?" Tarak said, spinning back around.
"If two weeks are possible," Kaidan said. "Just to give us a fairly diverse sample size."
"If you transfer the credits first, I think we can make that happen," Tarak said.
And so the credits were transferred, and so too was footage from the last two weeks uploaded to Tarak's personal monitor.
It didn't take long to find footage of someone in N7 armour abandoning a shuttle with black-and-gold striping and a familiar logo in one of the docking-hangars. And there was a quarian with this figure too, nervously glancing around like they were about to be shot at any second.
"You guys saw that too, right?" Kaidan said, feeling like he'd have to make it seem totally unexpected that someone in N7 armour was walking around Omega.
"Hmm…that's…unusual," Tarak said.
"Looks pretty fake to me," Ashley said. "Pretty sure the Alliance stopped using that kind of armour a while ago anyways. Probably just some yahoo."
"If they managed to clear our security checks," Tarak said, "then that's exactly who that is—just a…'yahoo'."
And if nobody else was dead, then clearly nobody in your security checks cared all that much, Ashley said to herself.
"Probably gonna try to sell that quarian too," Kaidan said, forcing out a chuckle and glancing at Ash.
"Let's see…hmm, maybe," Tarak said. "Looks like that person's heading to one of your human enclaves—"The Big Apple" is what I've heard it's been called—and most humans don't have any need for a quarian."
"Probably an idiot then," Ashley said. "No need to worry about them."
She kept an eye on that screen and, sure enough, a few days later, that N7 figure was back on the docks and picking up that black-and-gold shuttle—sans the quarian. Then they were back, taking another skycar backto The Big Apple, and then three days ago the N7 figure disappeared through the docks again. That was probably it—that was probably all the information they'd get.
They ended their talk with Tarak and promised to stay in touch, hash out some deal, the usual empty business talk. And it was only once they'd cleared the front door of Tarak's building that they let their posture become rigid.
"We might be able to pick up a trail," Kaidan said. "Assuming she's not coming back."
"Whoever they are, whether they're coming back or not, we can at least find that quarian," Ashley said. "If they're still alive, we might get some answers."
"Yeah. It's a slime-shot, but we've gotta take it."
"And then we can get Anderson on the phone and tell him the shuttle Shep—whoever, the shuttle they arrived on? It had the same logo as those people who're going after Mordin what's-his-name."
"Yeah…lots of things to figure out. Let's hope we can find Shepard's…this person's nest, and let's hope it has answers."
They got back to their skycar and saw that Garrus was gone. And once they noticed that, their omni-tools beeped.
"You two find what you need?" Garrus said on the other end of the call.
"Garrus? Where the hell are you?" Kaidan said.
"Somewhere hidden. Did you get everything you needed from Tarak?"
Ashley and Kaidan looked at each other, hesitated.
"We're fine," Ashley said. "But what's going on? What're you—"
"I'll explain everything later. You two get to where you need to go and then contact me again. I'll wait as long as I can."
"To do what, Garrus?" Ashley said.
"Get some answers before I leave this station." There was a pause on the other end, then. "I need you two to trust me that I'm doing this for a good reason. That you'd do the same things I am if you were in my position."
"Garrus," Ashley said, "we can't tell what the hell we'd do if we're not—"
"That's why I need you to trust me."
Ashley threw her hands up and started pacing, and Kaidan waited for her to stop, knowing he couldn't make a unilateral move on something like this. Eventually Ashley did stop, gave Kaidan a stare down, then looked at the ground like she was about to kick a pebble. Eventually, she nodded at Kaidan.
"We trust you, Garrus," he said. "We'll tell you when we're where we need to be."
"Understood." A pause. "Thank you. I…appreciate the trust."
The line went dead.
"Let's go then," Ashley said.
"Sure but, hold on a second," Kaidan said.
Didn't matter—Ash was already in the car.
Kaidan sighed and worked his way into the car too. He'd made a list of things he was going to say: first was that everything had worked out fine in there with Tarak, and the two of them should be proud; second thing was he appreciated the marks of confidence she'd given him; and third, that she could talk to him if she needed, he wasn't trying to be Shepard here—she could still talk to him as a friend if she needed to. He wasn't offering just to try and pick up where the Commander left off and that should be obvious.
But mission first—especially since this one had so many variables going on that getting lost in your own thoughts (like right now, c'mon Kaidan, stay focused) wasn't going to help anyone.
Ashley and Kaidan flew off to The Big Apple, and it was a painfully quiet trip.
6.
Demons…humans were demons. Had to be, only way to explain the face—the voice. He had heard of demons from humans before and now he knew why they spoke of them. Demons from somewhere evil taking you and tormenting you—they had been here already and they took the form of the humans who spread their word from star to star.
Took him from Freedom's Progress—only humans around, only humans and quarians would know he was there and the quarians didn't bother him, not after he left, not after Pilgrimage started. Only humans would know and the shape that grabbed him and took his omni-tool and spoke to him in that voice was human. Dead human…human with vocal cords that had been burned in a pit somewhere. But human, still human.
Demons…he'd died and now the humans were eating his soul, slowly, here in Omega. The human hadn't been back in an eternity but he still had an entirety left for her to return, ask him more questions about Reapers, horrible creatures she invented to scare him and make him talk easier so he wouldn't notice her stealing his soul. Geth—mentioned the geth. Geth were involved again. Humans and the geth, working together to steal the souls of everyone who had sinned like the quarians had.
Monsters lurked everywhere around him and his omni-tool was gone and his suit had punctures from where she'd ripped his omni-tool off his arm and what use did a demon have for an omni-tool and where had he heard Reapers before?
Somewhere in The Big Apple, laying on the floor in a puddle of his own anti-septic medication, the quarian known as Veetor'Nara had long since stopped hearing the alarms in his suit, each one warning him of an infection and a severe laceration on his wrist. The medicine that had pooled out onto the floor may have stopped the delirium, if it had stayed within his suit. But it wouldn't have been much help keeping the image of melted flesh over red-hot cybernetics, or the memory of a voice that sounded like someone choking on glass, from invading his mind every time he closed his eyes.
I'd originally been planning to write out the end of what I'm gonna start calling the "Omega Arc" (what with it being on Omega and everything) and keep it all in this chapter...but too much stuff started happening and I started realizing this chapter would end up being like 16,000 words long. Which is uh...too many words for a single chapter.
Anyways, that's the end of this chapter! Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. Only reference note to include is that the chapter title comes from China Miéville's short story collection of the same name (and also the first story in that collection, which makes sense), and that I'm operating on the assumption that Cerberus doesn't go around plastering its logo on things so that everybody knows its them when they pull up to port. I think I remember reading somewhere that the logo we see in the games is actually from one of its many front-corporations, but that point uhhhhhh doesn't necessarily come across in-game, so...yeah. Definitely keeping them more in the shadows, which I think makes sense since Miranda's at the helm, but what do I know, right?
Not much, I tell you what.